Excavating and loading machines are known which have a body with a loading arm at a front end of the body and an excavating arm at a rear end of the body, and a wheeled ground engaging structure, such as a pair of axles carrying ground engaging wheels.
Such machines are typically steerable by the wheels on one or both of the axles being steerable.
A combined excavating and loading machine provides for an owner, a versatile machine which is capable of performing a variety of excavating and loading operations. However, in providing a machine which is capable of performing both excavating and loading operations, design compromises have been made with the result that when the machine is performing particularly loading operations, machines have tended not to be as capable as modern dedicated loading machines, for one example of the kind in which a loading arm is mounted generally centrally of the machine between the sides of the machine with an operator's cab mounted towards one side of the machine, and a machine engine being mounted towards an opposite side of the machine, so that the loading arm can be lowered into a space between the cab and body structure beneath which the engine is at least partly provided.